National Museum of Australia shows ~ Utopia:The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Sunday, 24 August 2008 22:29

Canberra, AU - After its successful tour in Japan, the National Museum of Australia is pleased to present this selection of powerful works to a national audience. The Museum deals innovatively with the telling of Australian history through the stories of extraordinary Australians. This exhibition not only tells the story of Emily Kame Kngwarreye as one of Australia's greatest contemporary artists, but it also gives some insight into her life as a senior Anmatyerre woman and a lifelong custodian of the desert country that inspired her work.

We have an extensive collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, culture and history. Yet this exhibition goes beyond our own collection, to showcase 120 works drawn from some 60 private, public and corporate collections around the world. On view through 12 October, 2008.

Dots are an identifiable element of contemporary desert art, originating in ritual body painting and ground designs. No one, however, has so innovatively exploited the dot in such combinations and to greater effect than Emily, who surpasses the pointillists and the impressionists in this regard. Her dots vary from fine to coarse, from single to triple, and in concert they evoke the rhythm of dancing, the dynamism of growth and the life force of nature as windborne seeds scatter across the land. The changing seasons and the night skies can be sensed in the expansive and shifting tonalities of Emily's palette.

This is only the second time such a comprehensive collection of the best of Emily's work has been seen together. It astounded, delighted and informed a Japanese public otherwise unfamiliar with Australian contemporary culture and history.

The National Museum of Australia opened in 2001 and is delighted that this major project has come about so early in its short history, thus establishing a benchmark for future international collaborations